Analysis of Politics, Philosophy and Economics from a Marxist Perspective

Monday, 8 May 2017

Lessons of the Local Elections (3) - The Party's Over, Its Time To Burst The Balloons

The
Party's Over, Its Time To Burst The Balloons

The managers
of the big financial funds, like Bill Gross, recognise that globally
bonds are in a bubble that must soon burst, and when it does, and
interest rates surge, stock markets will crash, and property prices
will crash. The central banks also know that they have done all they
can to print never ending sums of money, to prop up these asset
prices, and now with prices driven so high that yields have fallen to
and below zero, there is nothing more they can do. This is the real
basis of the dilemma that is being seen across the globe of the
collapse of the political centre, which really means the collapse of
that conservative social-democracy that has dominated for the last
thirty years. It is breaking down into a struggle between reaction
and progressive social-democracy, and for the moment, the reaction is
winning.

The ground
on which this struggle is taking place is between nationalism and
internationalism, or as its often described, between nationalism and
globalism. And this in itself poses a problem for the progressive
social-democracy, which is why the reaction, at least for now, has
been winning. The problem is that the conservative social-democracy
was also internationalist in outlook, but its internationalism was
one based upon deregulated markets, as a means of driving down costs,
and allowing vast reservoirs of loanable money-capital to wash across
continents in search of rapid capital gains. It meant that the very
rich got even richer, and even sections of the middle class, and
working class that owned some of these assets had the delusion of
greater wealth, whilst large sections of industry got hollowed out,
and the urban areas attached to them decayed.

The workers
in these areas found themselves for years presented with options that
appeared to provide no solutions. On the one hand, there were small
revolutionary sects, who to the extent anyone was aware of their
existence, offered fantasies of revolution, as a millenarian solution
totally unrelated to reality, or workers immediate problems. On the
other, from both Conservative and Social-Democratic parties,
occupying that centre ground of conservative social democracy, they
were offered simply more of the same, with minor variations, and
promises of jam tomorrow, whilst every day they had to deal with the
reality of stagnant wages, uncertain employment, and rising living
costs. No wonder, therefore, that sections of the population could
be easily convinced that the reason for their problems lay not with
capitalism, and even, immediately, with a certain variant of that
capitalism, based on the needs of the owners of fictitious capital,
but with some alien other be it “foreigners”, “immigrants”,
“the EU”, “globalism”, or even “the metropolitan elite”,
all of which were basically lumped together as being the enemy, and
interchangeable terms, by the forces of reaction.

It is why,
on the one hand, we have seen the rise of new progressive
social-democratic forces such as Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain,
the Left Bloc in Portugal, as well as the Sanders phenomenon in the
US, that in part flowed out of the Occupy Movement, as well as the
rise of Corbynism in Britain, but, on the other hand, we have seen the
rise of UKIP, of Golden Dawn, of Wilders, of Le Pen and so on. As
conservative social-democracy was found bankrupt in ideas to relate
to the current situation, a process which also came to be known as
Depasokification, following the destruction of the old Greek
Social-Democratic Party, set in within the social democratic parties,
whilst conservative parties were driven further to the right, in the
direction of reaction.

About Me

Left school at 16. Became an ASTMS shop steward at 19, and a lifelong trade union activist. Delegate to North Staffs Trades Council 1974-87. Secretary North Staffs Miners Support Committee 1984-5. President North Staffs Trades Council 1985-6 and 1986-7. Delegate to Staffordshire Association of Trades Councils 1985-7. Delegate West Midlands Regional Council of the TUC 1985-7. Secretary Newcastle UNISON 2000-2.
Member of the International Communist League/Workers Socialist League 1974-87.
Went to University as mature student at age of 24. Obtained Joint Honours Degree in Economics and Politics with Philosophy and Statistics, followed by a Post Graduate Certificate in Education.
Labour Party member since 1974. Stoke City Councillor 1983-4, expelled from Labour group 1983, and resigned from Council in 1984 because of refusing to vote for rent and rate rises, and budget cuts. Staffordshire County Councillor 1997-2005.
Assistant Secretary Stoke District Labour Party 1981, and held pretty much every position from Executive member, to Branch Secretary, and Branch Chair.